Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 229

June 2-3, 2018: May 2018 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]April 30: Haymarket Histories: An American Revolution?: A series on the Haymarket Affair’s anniversary starts with whether we can consider the Labor Movement a 19th century revolution.May 1: Haymarket Histories: The May Day Strike: The series continues with a motivation, a debate, and an effect of one of the earliest nationwide strikes.May 2: Haymarket Histories: Historical Ambiguities: What we’ll never know about Haymarket and what we can say anyway, as the series rolls on.May 3: Haymarket Histories: The Trial: Two frustrating failures of and one inspiring moment from a farcical show trial.May 4: Haymarket Histories: Remembering Haymarket: The series concludes with two existing ways to better remember Haymarket, and one I’d love to see.May 5-6: Scholarly Tribute: Erik Loomis: A special weekend tribute post, on three ways to read the vital voice of one of our best labor historians.May 7: Hap & Leonard Studying: ‘60s Legacies: A series on the wonderful SundanceTV show starts with three layers to its portrayal of ‘60s legacies in its ‘80s setting.May 8: Hap & Leonard Studying: Redefining Lynching: The series continues with two important historical layers to the show’s amazing second season.May 9: Hap & Leonard Studying: Crime and Punishment: Some of the show’s wonderful supporting characters from within the world of the justice system, as the series rolls on.May 10: Hap & Leonard Studying: The Devil Went Down to Texas: A mythic and a very real context for the season three frame.May 11: Hap & Leonard Studying: Interracial Friendship: The series concludes with adding the title characters to a fun and important list.May 12-13: A Tribute to Michael K. Williams: A special weekend tribute to three stages in the evolution of one of our best actors.May 14: Spring Semester Recaps: 19th Century African American Literature: A Spring semester reflection series starts with three texts I had never had the chance to read until I taught them in this course.May 15: Spring Semester Recaps: American Literature I: The series continues with the long-overdue, vital step of including Yung Wing in my Am Lit I course.May 16: Spring Semester Recaps: English Studies Capstone: Two education-focused texts I’ve used in Capstone and my search for a new one, as the series rolls on.May 17: Spring Semester Recaps: American Literature II Online: Three texts that worked surprisingly well in my first online American Lit survey course.May 18: Spring Semester Recaps: My Saturday Evening Post Gig: The series concludes with two things I’ve learned from my first few months at a new online writing gig.May 19-20: Summer and Fall Previews: A special weekend post on three courses I’m looking forward to teaching in the semesters to come!May 21: Irene Martyniuk’s Guest Post on Clara Barton: A series on the American Red Cross’s anniversary starts with my colleague’s Guest Post on its founder.May 22: Nursing Histories: Molly Pitcher: The series continues with the myths and histories of an iconic war hero.May 23: Nursing Histories: Walt Whitman: Three texts through which Whitman wrote about his experiences as a Civil War nurse, as the series rolls on.May 24: Nursing Histories: WWI Nurses: How nurses can help us push beyond our understandable but simplistic images of wartime military service.May 25: Nursing Histories: Medal of Honor Medics: The series concludes with three of the fifteen medics who received the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.May 26-27: PBS Documentary on the Chinese Exclusion Act: A special post highlighting both a vital new film and my Saturday Evening Post piece inspired by it.May 28: BlockbusterStudying: The Fast and the Furious Series: A Memorial Day movie series starts with two ways to AmericanStudy the surprisingly popular franchise.May 29: BlockbusterStudying: The Last Jedi: The series continues with the thoughtful questions behind a controversial character arc, and why they’re so vital.May 30: BlockbusterStudying: Wonder Woman: The historical activist women who would appreciate a wondrous one, as the series rolls on.May 31: BlockbusterStudying: Coco: The animated film that’s at least as culturally and historically significant as Black Panther.June 1: BlockbusterStudying: Get Out: The series concludes with three of the many horror and genre film contexts for Jordan Peele’s blockbuster.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

June 1, 2018: BlockbusterStudying: Get Out

[Although Black Panther has already busted just about every conceivable block, Memorial Day launches the summer blockbuster season. So this week I wanted to return to some BlockbusterStudying, focusing especially on big hits from last year. Add your BlockbusterStudying thoughts, please!]On three of the many horror and genre film contexts for Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning game-changing smash hit.1)      The Stepford Wives (1975): I think it’s fair to say that Bryan Forbes’s suburban sci-fi horror film(based on Ira Levin’s 1972 novel and with a screenplay by the great William Goldman) was one of the most direct influences on Peele’s film. While there are of course plenty of differences (thanks to Peele’s background in comedy, for example, Get Out is far funnier than Stepford, part of the reason why the Golden Globes had a famously hard time pinning down Get Out’s category), the two films share a key goal: turning images of suburban perfection (and really in many ways the American Dream) on their heads, and in the process considering what such images mean for communities of marginalized and oppressed Americans. It’s easy to forget (especially given the terrible 2004 remake) just how ground-breaking Stepford was in that regard; maybe a double-feature with Get Out to remind us?2)      Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): Adapted from Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers, Don Siegel’s sci-fi horror film (which has been remade at least three times, but as usual go to the original) depicts an alien invasion where the goal is literally to take over the planet, one snatched human body at a time. The novel and film’s concept of “pod people” seems to me to be an important origin point for (or at least influence on) the distinct body takeovers present in stories like Stepfordand Get Out, as well as in zombie films like Night of the Living Dead(1968) for that matter. Yet there’s an important difference, and it’s particularly central to Peele’s film: that the villains taking over bodies here are fellow humans, and ones doing so based on an overt prejudice toward members of that community. We have met the body snatchers, that is, and they are us.3)      The Last House on the Left (1972): This one is a good bit less obvious, but bear with me. At the heart of horror legend Wes Craven’s directorial debut (he also wrote and edited the film) is a crucial contrast between a gang of vicious thugs and an innocent suburban family; what makes the film’s second half especially shocking and brutal is that it’s the surviving family members who turn on the thugs, becoming even more violent than them in the process. Interestingly, Peele’s film could be described in parallel yet opposite ways: in Get Out the nice suburban family are the gang of vicious thugs, and it’s the innocent outsider (who’s with their daughter, if in this case consensually) who in the film’s final section has to become even more violent than them if he’s to survive and exact his revenge. I can’t say for sure that Peele was thinking about Craven’s film at all, but I will say that it’s precisely that kind of script-flipping that makes Get Out such a wonderful and important blockbuster.May Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other blockbusters you’d highlight and analyze?

May 31, 2018: BlockbusterStudying: Coco

[Although Black Panther has already busted just about every conceivable block, Memorial Day launches the summer blockbuster season. So this week I wanted to return to some BlockbusterStudying, focusing especially on big hits from last year. Add your BlockbusterStudying thoughts, please!]On the animated film that’s at least as culturally and historically important as Black Panther.First things first: I haven’t had a chance to see Pixar’s latest film Coco (2017) yet, and so can’t speak in any specific way about either its details or its quality (although it’s Pixar and not in the Cars universe, so I’d be shocked if it’s not at least pretty darn good). My two favorite film reviewers, my sons, did have a chance to see it recently, and report that it’s “very good,” “a bit sad but with a happy ending,” and “not like any other animated movie,” which is the particular aspect of the film that I want to focus on in this post. Coco is the first film with a nine-figure budget (it reportedly cost upwards of $175 million to make) to feature an entirely Latino cast, with 12 year old newcomer and lead Anthony Gonzalez supported by established greats like Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Edward James Olmos, and many more. That might seem like a given for a film set in Mexico, but of course it’s anything but; just look at the cast for Disney’s Mulan (1998), which despite being set in imperial China featured non-Asian voice actors like Miguel Ferrer, Harvey Fierstein, Eddie Murphy, and Marni Nixon in prominent roles.So Coco represents an important step in casting such big-budget animated (and non-animated) films, and one that nicely lines up with current conversations about diversity and inclusion riders, #OscarsSoWhiteand Hollywood whitewashing and how to challenge and change such trends, and more. But the film is just as important, and to my mind even more so, when it comes to the questions of representation and identity that I discussed in this post on The Princess and the Frog(which, to its credit, did feature a largely African American cast voicing its African American characters, although the romantic lead Prince Naveen was voiced by the Brazilian American actor Bruno Campos). As I noted there, no genre of films connects with young viewers more consistently than animated films, and so casting such films with actors who reflect diverse communities—in any and all cases, but even more so when the film’s story and setting connect to those communities and their histories and stories—is a vital way to make diverse young Americans feel included in our collective conversations.Indeed, I would go so far as to say that an all-Latino animated film like Coco is at least as important, culturally and historically, as is the overwhelmingly African and African American cast of Black Panther. Of course the actors are not visible on screen in an animated film in the same way that they are in a live-action one, and that difference is not insignificant when it comes to representation and perception. But kids (especially this born digital generation of kids) can and will look up the actors who play characters in an animated movie, will seek our interviews or behind the scenes clips, will learn more about the communal effort of making a film. And in at least some ways, doing so and finding out that the voice actors are just as consistently Latino as the film’s characters and setting could be an even more moving and powerful moment (for any kid, but doubly so for a Latino kid) than seeing actors who look like us on screen. One of many reasons to celebrate Coco, and to root for more blockbuster animated films like it in the years to come.Last blockbuster tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other blockbusters you’d highlight and analyze?

May 30, 2018: BlockbusterStudying: Wonder Woman

[Although Black Panther has already busted just about every conceivable block, Memorial Day launches the summer blockbuster season. So this week I wanted to return to some BlockbusterStudying, focusing especially on big hits from last year. Add your BlockbusterStudying thoughts, please!]On the historical women who would especially appreciate this wondrous one.I wasn’t quite as enamored of Wonder Woman (2017) as most viewers—this isn’t a non-favorite series, so I won’t go into all those details, but overall I would say it was a pretty conventional superhero origin story, if with of course an important gender reversal. But one thing that did really affect and impress me about the film was its emphasis on philosophical and historical pacifism. The entire reason Diana (Gal Gadot) leaves her island paradise in the first place is because she learns about the ongoing horrors of the Great War and becomes determined to stop them; granted she does so because she believes correctly that her people’s longstanding enemy Ares the God of War has returned and is behind the war (this is a comic book superhero film, after all), but it’s perfectly easy and appropriate to see that character as also a metaphor for the forces that drive nations to war and of its accompanying horrors and destructions. In any case, Wonder Woman’s central motivation and goal is profoundly pacifist, no small thing in a blockbuster action film.No small historical thing either, of course, but in that sense Wonder Woman is part of a large and existing community and historical trend: the link between women’s rights activists and anti-war efforts. Forgive me for quoting myself, but these two paragraphs from this prior post on anti-war suffrage activists highlight these historical women who I’m pretty sure would be first in line to support this film:“Such dismissals of anti-war protesters were nothing new in American society, of course. Whereas the Vietnam War became so broadly unpopular that its anti-war movement garnered as much support as it did critique (although the aforementioned stereotyping of the protesters still occurred to be sure), the World War II and World War I anti-war movements were far more nationally unpopular and subject to the same kind of attacks. During both wars, many of the most prominent pacificists, both in America and around the world, were also women’s rights activists; a trend exemplified by Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, who opposed both world wars and who represented the sole Congressional “no” vote against declaring war on Japan on December 8th, 1941. Rankin’s political career survived her World War I pacifism, but her opposition to World War II proved not only politically costly but personally destructive, both in media coverage and in threats on her life. (She did not run for reelection, but did live to lead an anti-Vietnam War campaign in 1968!)The virulent opposition to Rankin and her pacifist colleagues could be attributed solely to pro-war agitation and fever, and certainly that’s been a consistent part of such wartime historical moments and narratives. But I think it would also need to be analyzed in conjunction with the equally virulent and too-often forgotten opposition faced by suffragistsand other women’s rights leaders. In that linked post I highlighted the shockingly nasty children’s book Ten Little Suffergets (c.1910), which offers a particularly vivid but far from isolated illustration (literally and figuratively) of such anti-women’s rights attitudes. If we have largely forgotten this kind of widespread anti-suffragist vitriol, one clear reason would be our collective recognition of just how fully those women’s rights activists were on the right side of history—a lesson that we perhaps have yet to learn when it comes to our anti-war movements, contemporary and historical.”Next blockbuster tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other blockbusters you’d highlight and analyze?

May 29, 2018: BlockbusterStudying: The Last Jedi

[Although Black Panther has already busted just about every conceivable block, Memorial Day launches the summer blockbuster season. So this week I wanted to return to some BlockbusterStudying, focusing especially on big hits from last year. Add your BlockbusterStudying thoughts, please!][NB: some SPOILERS follow, so if you haven’t seen Last Jedi yet, go do so and then come back to share your thoughts here!]On the thoughtful questions behind a controversial character arc, and why they’re so vital.It’s not exactly breaking news to note that Mark Hamill did not initially see eye-to-eye with director and screenwriter Rian Johnson over his character Luke Skywalker’s role and perspective in The Last Jedi (2017). Hell, there’s even a new documentary called The Director and the Jedi that documents their disagreements, as well as their evolution toward a more shared understanding (one that Hamill now voices very eloquently). In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I absolutely love the film, and especially really enjoyed both Luke as a character and Hamill’s performance (and it’s a tribute to him as an actor that he does such a pitch-perfect job despite his reservations). But I get where Hamill was coming from with those initial responses: for most of the film Luke is a bitter and nasty s.o.b., and one who specifically expresses opinions and perspectives that seem to dismantle quite thoroughly everything about the Jedi and the Force that constituted his character’s beautiful arc in the original Star Wars trilogy .Yet as I argued in this post (still one of my favorites across the more than 2300 I’ve shared in this space), I believe that the character of Luke has always represented a complex combination of Jedi and anti-Jedi (at least as an influential character like Yoda defines the Jedi). More exactly, Luke has always relied on emotion as a guiding part of his embrace of the Force and role as a Jedi, despite Yoda’s assertions that emotions are dangerous or lead to the Dark Side. So the Luke that we meet at the start of Last Jedi—a Luke whose missteps and failures with young Ben Solo have made him question bitterly his own life and work, as well as the broader concepts behind the Jedi Order and even the Force itself—is just experiencing and responding to another set of emotions, ones still driven by love and family (Ben is his nephew, after all) but now coming from a far darker place. Without spoiling entirely where his character ends up by the film’s wonderful concluding moments, I’ll just note that anyone who sees that bitter Luke as the Last Jedi’s only or central version of this character and his perspective must have stopped paying attention a bit earlier than they should have (or taken a really long and poorly timed bathroom break).However, I don’t think his character’s arc and evolution in the film is necessary to appreciate Luke’s bitter questions about the past and his ideals. Indeed, I would argue that another failing of Yoda’s seems to be that even after the disastrous events of the prequels—and his own direct role in Anakin Skywalker’s descent to the Dark Side, as I note in that hyperlinked post—he still when we meet him on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back holds to most of the same ideas about the Jedi, emotion, and the like. Even if those disastrous past events had not taken place, I don’t think anyone should continue to hold the same views across the arc of their life, not without careful and thoughtful examination of them and a willingness to critique and even perhaps set aside those that do not stand up to such scrutiny. While Luke might voice his examinations and critiques in a more bitter way than would be ideal (again, he’s an emotional guy!), the perspectives themselves are healthy and exemplary for any person late in his or her life. And [SPOILERS one more time] with the help of Rey, herself a combination of Jedi and emotion to be sure, by the end of the film Luke moves past those critiques and into a distinct but still heroic perspective on the Jedi and their role.Next blockbuster tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other blockbusters you’d highlight and analyze?

May 28, 2018: BlockbusterStudying: The Fast and the Furious Series

[Although Black Panther has already busted just about every conceivable block, Memorial Day launches the summer blockbuster season. So this week I wanted to return to some BlockbusterStudying, focusing especially on big hits from last year. Add your BlockbusterStudying thoughts, please!]On two ways to contextualize the hugely (and surprisingly) popular action franchise.I can’t imagine that anyone really imagined that 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, a Point Break -inspired street racing film starring a group of relatively unknown young actors, would become the starting point for one of the 21st century’s most successful film franchises. But that is indeed what has happened: 2017’s The Fate of the Furious was the eighth film to date in a franchise that has cumulatively grossed over $5 billion (making it the sixth-highest-grossing film series ever). Add in the fact that Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s song “See You Again” (2015), a tribute to the late actor Paul Walker that was featured in the final scene of 2015’s Furious 7 (I dare you to watch that clip and not tear up), is one of YouTube’s most watched videos, and it’s fair to say—whether we quite understand it or not—that the Fast and Furious film franchise has become one of the new century’s most influential cultural texts.Here at AmericanStudies we work to understand, however, and I would say that there are a couple of contexts that help explain the franchise’s success. For one thing, the first film in particular—but also in many ways the series as a whole—provides yet another example of American cultural fascination with and admiration for outlaws. Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and his crew are, quite simply, criminals, fronting as a legitimate garage but really making money sticking up and robbing tractor trailer drivers. They’re not doing so for some grand purpose or out of necessity, but for both the money and the thrill. Yet not only are viewers clearly meant to agree with Paul Walker’s undercover police officer Brian O’Conner when he decides to let Toretto go at the film’s conclusion, but also as the franchise develops O’Conner and Toretto consistently work together. At a certain point they and the crew shift from criminals pulling elaborate heists to semi-law enforcement figures working with the authorities (especially Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Agent Luke Hobbs) to help catch other criminals; but even that arc highlights how much we seem to want to believe in these outlaw figures as vigilante forces for good in our society.There’s a second important context for the series’s success, though, and I would (shockingly, I know) connect it to a Bruce Springsteen song, “Racing in the Street” (1978). The one aspect of Springsteen’s catalogue that I’ve never quite connected with is the consistent emphasis on cars, one that has produced some of his most beautiful songs (not only “Racing,” but also of course “Born to Run” [1975] and one of my very favorites “Brothers Under the Bridges” [1983], among many others). I think perhaps the last verse of “Racing” comes closest to explaining this automotive obsession: “For all the shut-down strangers and hot rod angels/Rumbling through this promised land/Tonight my baby and me, we’re gonna ride to the sea/And wash these sins off our hands.” Which is to say, the connection of cars to the American Dream isn’t just about getting in what Tracy Chapman calls a “fast car” and driving somewhere else and better (although yes)—it’s also and perhaps especially about the possibility of starting over, of getting clean, of transcending our limitations and racing toward a more perfect future. In that sense, Toretto and company aren’t just outlaws, they’re all of us, desperately driven to be something else and something more and racing in the street to try to get there.Next blockbuster tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other blockbusters you’d highlight and analyze?

May 26-27, 2018: PBS Documentary on the Chinese Exclusion Act

This coming Tuesday, May 29th, at 8pm PBS’s American Experience series will air The Chinese Exclusion Act, a new documentary from award-winning filmmakers Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu. I had the chance to see an advance screener of the film, and can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a vital work that has so much to tell and teach us about both its specific histories and overarching and ongoing national issues and narratives.I highlighted some of those histories and issues for my most recent Saturday Evening Post piece . They’re likely familiar to readers of this blog, but they, like the film, demand our further attention and engagement. Hope you get a chance to watch, and please share your thoughts here if you do!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

May 25, 2018: Nursing Histories: Medal of Honor Medics

[On May 21st, 1881, Clara Barton founded the American National Red Cross. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and contexts related to nursing and medical aid, starting with my colleague and friend Irene’s Guest Post on Barton herself! Add your responses and thoughts for a healthy crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]Thanks to this website’s exhaustive list, here are three of the fifteen medics who received the Medal of Honor for their service during the Vietnam War.1)      Donald W. Evans Jr.: One of the eight medics who received the Medal of Honor posthumously, the 24 year-old Californian Evans did so for going far above and beyond to provide medical attention to the soldiers of a different platoon from his own (which was not yet part of the battle). Wounded multiple times, he continued to move soldiers out of harm’s way and to safer positions; while treating one more such soldier he was killed by enemy fire. Just as I wrote about WW1 nurses in yesterday’s post, there’s no way to see what Evans did as anything other than military service, and indeed the most ideal version of that service, one entirely dedicated to his comrades (even those outside of the platoon for which he was responsible). 2)      Alfred Rascon: 21 year-old Mexican American immigrant Rascon’s story of courage and resilience under fire (and while being wounded so many times that his survival in and of itself is a miracle) is so incredible that I can’t possibly sum it up in a few sentences, and would ask you to check out the whole thing at that hyperlink. At an age when most of us are barely formed as adults, Rascon performed one of the most impressive acts of selfless heroism about which I’ve ever read, truly embodying the spirit and ethos of combat medics.3)      Clarence Eugene Sasser: An African American from Houston, Sasser was only 20 years old when he performed similar acts of extreme heroism to Rascon’s, also while taking multiple wounds that left him “in agonizing pain and faint from loss of blood.” Per that hyperlinked account, after reaching that point he attended the wounds of a large group of soldiers for another five hours until they could be evacuated to safety. More than anything, I believe these medics’ stories, like those of all the nurses and aid workers I’ve highlighted this week, reflect the strength of the human spirit and how it can often be witnessed most fully in service to others. Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Other nursing or medical histories you’d highlight?

May 24, 2018: Nursing Histories: WWI Nurses

[On May 21st, 1881, Clara Barton founded the American National Red Cross. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and contexts related to nursing and medical aid, starting with my colleague and friend Irene’s Guest Post on Barton herself! Add your responses and thoughts for a healthy crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]On pushing beyond our understandable but simplistic images of wartime service.First, I’d ask you to check out this wonderful PBS American Experience articleby Professor Marian Moser Jones on the more than 22,000 professionally trained female nurses who served with the US Army during World War I (more than 10,000 of them near the Western Front and perilously close to combat). Then c’mon back here and we’ll talk some more!Welcome back! Clearly those amazing stories (and the tens of thousands more not featured in that article) are well worth remembering and retelling for their own sake, but I would also highlight an important broader effect of doing so. When we think about military service in a conflict like the Great War—and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, to be clear—I believe we almost always think about members of the armed forces, those directly involved in combat operations. Certainly I don’t want to downplay what those men (and it was all men in the US armed forces in the Great War) experienced; but as Jones’s article details clearly, nurses at the Western Front went through many of the same experiences as men in the armed forces, including incoming bombs, shrapnel damage and other serious wounds, infections and contagious disease, and more. To put it simply, war’s threats and effects do not discriminate, nor they are aware of the specific role (much less the gender) of those affected.Thinking about these WW1 nurses as fully part of wartime service isn’t just (or even primarily) about gender equality or women’s rights. Instead, doing so helps us more accurately assess and engage with particular historical and social questions: what these women faced and experienced; what those experiences meant and contributed to the war effort; what effects they had on their careers, lives, and identities moving forward. Of course nursing isn’t the same as fighting in combat, but the same could be said of many of the roles undertaken by particular soldiers: radio operators, for example. The truth is that military service entails many different elements, with direct participation in combat operations one central thread but far from the only one. And it seems clear to me from the stories and histories detailed in Jones’s article that these WW1 nurses took part in military service in any and every way we could understand that concept, and deserve to be remembered as part of that broader American community and history. Last nursing post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other nursing or medical histories you’d highlight?

May 23, 2018: Nursing Histories: Walt Whitman

[On May 21st, 1881, Clara Barton founded the American National Red Cross. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and contexts related to nursing and medical aid, starting with my colleague and friend Irene’s Guest Post on Barton herself! Add your responses and thoughts for a healthy crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]On three texts through which Whitman wrote about his Civil War experiences as a volunteer nurse.1)       “The Great Army of the Sick” (1863): Only two months into his nursing experiences, Whitman penned this article for the New York Times, describing at length the conditions in the war hospitals, using the example of one particular wounded soldier to both detail the war’s horrors and make a case for the vital role nurses could play in helping the soldiers recover, and sharing his perspective on the overarching challenges and value of this work. Perhaps the most interesting line comes toward the end: “The army is very young—and so much more American than I supposed.” As often with Whitman, I’m not entirely sure what he means, but I suspect it might have to do with the variety and diversity of the young men Whitman encountered.2)      Drum-Taps (1865): A book of poems about and inspired by the war and his experiences in it, Drum-Taps is not in any specific way focused on nursing or the hospital settings or wounded soldiers. But besides being published after Whitman’s nearly three years of work as a nurse, and so clearly a response to that stage of his life and career, the book also includes particular poems like “The Dresser” (later retitled “The Wound-Dresser”) with lines like, “Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,/Straight and swift to my wounded I go”; or “Hymn of Dead Soldiers,” undoubtedly inspired by all the wounded Whitman had been unable to save. This is Whitman’s Civil War book, and Whitman’s Civil War was in the hospitals.3)      Memoranda During the War (1875): A decade after the war and his experiences there ended, Whitman wrote this autobiographical and sociological study of that time, expanding greatly on “The Great Army of the Sick” but adding many other layers as well. The book’s thesis can be summed up by this early quote: “I know not how it may have been, or may be, to others—to me the main interest of the War, I found, (and still, on recollection, find,) in those specimens, and in the ambulance, the Hospital, and even the dead on the field. To me, the points illustrating the latent Personal Character and eligibilities of These States, in the two or three millions of American young and middle-aged men, North and South, embodied in the armies—and especially the one-third or one-fourth of their number, stricken by wounds or disease at some time in the course of the contest—were of more significance even than the Political interests involved.” It’s a powerful idea, and a compelling way to make Whitman’s nursing experiences into a symbolic emblem of the war’s participants, victims, ideals, and effects.Next nursing post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other nursing or medical histories you’d highlight?